Too Much, Too Soon: How American Men's Tennis Sabotages Young Stars

Frances Tiafoe, 17 years old and already the next great male American tennis player, has arrived. Wasn't Pete Sampras a teenager when he won the U.S. Open? Tiafoe took the court on Tuesday in Winnetka, IL., a suburb of Chicago, to play in a Challenger tournament—tennis' top minor league level—and unlike his 30-year-old journeyman opponent, he was creating a buzz.

I was excited to see Tiafoe in person for the first time. Everyone was, all 200 or so fans in the stands of this little suburban club stadium. The world's best players all were across the ocean at Wimbledon, and of course, every American man in the All-England Club draw already had been eliminated. But the future was here. Earlier this year, Tiafoe turned pro, becoming the first tennis client of Jay-Z's Roc Nation sports agency. He's being tutored by top coach Jose Higueras, who once worked with Jim Courier, Roger Federer and Sampras. Tifoe is it, at least right now, and those of us getting an up-close look were all-in. So imagine my shock when just 20 minutes into his match—a loss—one thing became clear:

Tiafoe isn't ready for this. Not as a player. In fact, he isn't even close. Does every 17-year old athlete need to be told that he's ready to be a star? Tiafoe is not LeBron James, not Kobe Bryant, not Rafael Nadal.

I told Higueras I was shocked by his low level of play.

"I was, too,'' Higueras said. "This was the first match I've seen him. We just started working together three weeks ago. He looked scared to be honest. I was shocked that he backed away from playing his type of game so fast.

"The hype doesn't help. It's really unfair. He can become a good player, but at this point, he's not.''

When will we learn?

This is a serious problem for top-level American tennis. We keep pushing kids who aren't ready—who don't yet know how to play—onto the brutal, unforgiving pro tour. And never mind scratching and clawing for prize money and ranking points: just for the sake of normal human development, children shouldn't be living on the road as professionals.

Remember Donald Young? He was Tiafoe before Tiafoe, a can't-miss-kid, a teenager who turned pro after John McEnroe almost single-handedly ran a public relations campaign on behalf of his and Young's agent, IMG, claiming that Young was the next great thing.

Playing against men, Young got crushed. Over and over. His tennis game was battered. His psyche, too. His relationship with the United States Tennis Association fell apart.

The National Basketball Association forces players to grow up a bit, spend at least a year in college before they join the league. But tennis has no firm age restrictions, nothing to nudge promising young players such as Tiafoe—who has the skills and work ethic to succeed over time—into slower, sustainable growth.

Instead, the sport too often pushes its kids onto the road, setting them up for a spin cycle of frustration and failure.

Don't take my word for it. Ask Ryan Harrison. He's a former can't-miss-kid, the next Donald Young, a player who reached the top 50 as a teenager. He was far more polished as a teen than Tiafoe—and he wasn't ready to handle the tour, either. Or the hype. It just about ruined him.

Harrison was playing in the same Challenger tournament as Tiafoe this week, working on a professional comeback. He is 23 years old. When he discusses some of the hurdles he has tripped over, it's not just a warning to Tiafoe. It's warning to the tennis world—fans, industry, media—about the ways they risk breaking kids.

Listen to Harrison, and you'll start to understand that when our male prospects and prodigies fail, it isn't solely their fault. It's the system's fault, too.

"I've been a can't-miss prospect to a has-been about 10 times already in my career,'' he said. "I just turned 23. And it's funny because if I was in my first year out of college, which I would be right now, and I'd had the year I've had so far, I'd be the most talked about American in the world.''

Did someone mention college?

Of course, there are differences between Harrison and Tiafoe. For one, Harrison didn't play scared at 17. He already had beaten a top 15 player, Ivan Ljubicic, at the U.S. Open. Moreover, Harrison says that Andy Roddick's status as the face of American men's tennis deflected any criticism about the country's on-court failures, freeing Harrison and other players from a sense of responsibility.

Roddick became close to Harrison, offering advice and helping set a path as he moved up to No. 43 in the world.

"I had been following his guidance,'' Harrison said. "But then he retired after the 2012 (U.S.) Open. At that point, I didn't do a great job of it. It was me making decisions and not following the path and process Andy was giving me.''

One of those decisions involved not coming up with a competitive raise for his Australian coach, Grant Doyle, who had a lucrative offer in his home country. After splitting with Doyle, Harrison then went to the USTA for coaching help. And that's part of the problem, at least as I see it. Harrison speaks highly of USTA coach Jay Berger, but more often than not, the USTA demands that players do things its way. It also tends to surround players with a fleet of coaches, which means too many chefs in the kitchen.

"I didn't play well, and then I panicked,'' he said. "The panic leads to everything. Confidence loss. It becomes easy to make bad decisions like `I'd rather not hit the extra serve in practice today because I'm getting discouraged.'

"It was a combination of two things. First off, I wasn't prepared mentally to handle the pressure and spotlight that was thrown at me. Secondly, after Andy retired, there was no Jack Sock or anyone. It was pretty much me, and then a monster gap after me."

Harrison was expected to carry American men's tennis, pretty much by himself. He was still just a kid.

"Honestly, where I'm at with my life right now, with my coach, with my trainer, with my personal life, with my love life, with everyone around me, I'm so much more stable and prepared to handle it now than I was four years ago," he said.

This makes sense. It should make sense. Now more than ever, pro tennis is a tough sport. A man's sport—not in the clichéd, macho sense, but literally. (It has become a woman's sport, too, equally harsh on female prodigies).

Yet somehow, we've forgotten this.

Time for some quick math. Here are the ages of the men's quarterfinalists at this year's Wimbledon: Roger Federer, 33. Andy Murray, 28. Novak Djokovic, 28. Marin Cilic, 26. Richard Gasquet, 29. Stan Wawrinka, 30. Vasek Pospisil, 25. Gilles Simon, 30.

Average age? 28.6 years. Oh, and in the actual quarterfinal matches, the older guys won three out of four, raising the semifinal average age to 29.5.

Sampras won the U.S. Open as a 19-year old, but that was 25 years ago. Since 2000, teenagers have won exactly one major. That was Nadal's first French Open title. And he's the best clay court player ever, maybe the best player ever, the exception to the rule.

Tiafoe is more representative of the typical teen prodigy: big and powerful, with a long way to go. In his Challenger match on Tuesday, against Somdev Devvarman, he started on a roll, hitting winner after winner, taking a 3-1 lead. He was pumped. You could see his potential, the ability that has led to some minor league success and a wild card berth at the French Open, where he lost in the first round.

And then, everything fell apart.

Devvarman started running down balls, floating them back. One after another after another, forcing Tiafoe to hit four, five, six shots on the same point. Suddenly, Tiafoe, started attempting lost-cause dropshots at the end of long rallies, even though he wasn't in position for them.

He was panicking. He couldn't trust his spin-heavy forehand. He started bailing out on long points. Eventually, he stopped hitting the ball hard at all, even on his serve.

Devvarman won five straight games to win the set 6-3. In the second, Tiafoe decided to reassert himself, and stuck with his aggressive play for … about three points. After that, he was lost. Again. He had no game plan. Couldn't adjust. His second serve was so slow it could have gotten a ticket for loitering. He lost 6-1, closing the match by dropping 11 of 12 games.

Tiafoe walked about 50 feet away from the court, dropped his racquet bag on the ground, sat on it and leaned against a tree. Higueras talked to him there for 20 minutes.

When I approached him, Tiafoe politely said he didn't want to any answer questions: "Not now, OK?''

Instead, I talked to Devvarman.

"I find these young guys always come out firing pretty hard,'' he said. "With young guys, I can't give them easy points. I wanted to make it a match about patience, about making him hit bad shots from bad positions on the court.

"After a while, when guys make you come up with good shots over and over—when you're young, that gets harder and harder."

Could Devvarman imagine what it was like out there for a 17-year old?

"Yeah, I played a few pro events when I was a junior.''

That much is true. Only Devvarman followed that by going to the University of Virginia, where he won two National Collegiate Athletic Association championships. He doesn't have Tiafoe's talent. But his story is instructive.

In a way, so is Harrison's.

Last fall, Harrison called his friend on the Cincinnati Reds, pitcher Homer Bailey, to talk about how he went from a prospect to a star. Bailey recommended a sports psychologist, who now counsels Harrison. Harrison called Roddick, too. He asked for help, "as much as he'd be willing to give.'' Roddick got Harrison back together with his old coach, who travels with him 20 weeks a year.

This spring, Harrison beat Grigor Dimitrov for his first win against a player in the top 10. He beat Ivo Karlovic, now ranked No. 25. And he suffered a close loss to No. 5 Kei Nishikori.

Harrison then tore a ligament in his ankle. He didn't panic. In June, he spent a week in Austin with Roddick and three other players, training hard, five hours a day on court, plus fitness.

"Andy really helped me put the pieces back together,'' Harrison said.

In the Challenger event in Winnetka, Harrison played a first-round match against another promising young American, 17-year-old Stefan Kozlov. He won 6-4, 6-4. Kozlov struggled to power the ball. He also broke down mentally. At one point early in the second set, he turned to the back fence, put his forearm up against it, and pushed his forehead into his arm.

Afterward, Harrison sat on a hallway floor, stretching his hamstrings. During the match, he heard a pop in his ankle, couldn't help but worry that he had reinjured it. He was a long, long way from Wimbledon, waiting for his ankle to swell up. (It turned out to be fine). Still, his spirits were high. Harrison's ranking is back to No. 129. He doesn't feel the pressure of promise anymore, not in the same way. He doesn't worry if someone writes something negative or if he fails to perform perfectly on the court.

"I'm not scared to take a loss now and then,'' he said. "I'm getting better. Going into my 20-year old season, I wasn't ready for it. Now, put me in a situation; I'll be ready.''

Too fast, too soon, too much. No one is pushing Harrison. Not anymore. He's pushing himself. He's ready to do so. When will we learn? While Tiafoe sat against the tree, Higueras began to lay out the plan.

"It's not important at 17 whether they win or lose,'' Higueras told me as he left Tiafoe. "It's important that we do the things on a daily basis that are going to make him good.

"We have a lot of good boys (in the U.S). Frances, Kozlov … It's just important that they stay in the moment. It's going to take a little work before they get where they can get.''

For Tiafoe, there was no time for a post-match shower or snack. Higueras took him straight from the tree to a practice court, where they worked into the evening.